With its easy-to-read and personal style, this book provides some intriguing new explanations of the physiology of death and the dying experience.--Susan Blackmore, PhD, Author of Dying to LiveDying is the last conscious experience undergone by each person. But what do the dying experience? In the last few decades a good deal of publicity has surrounded people who have been close to death and then reported intense experiences that seem to suggest a supernatural existence beyond death. Does the conscious mind somehow continue to exist after the body has passed away? Mortal Minds answers these questions.Dr. G. M. Woerlee explains how the normal functioning of the human body near death can generate beliefs in the reality of the supernatural and life after death. An anesthesiologist with more than twenty years of hospital experience, Dr. Woerlee has been struck over the years by the similarities between the body's symptoms under anesthesia and its reactions near death. Among the issues he addresses are the sensations of being disembodied that those near death often describe, the perception that mind and body are separate components of existence, whether there is such a thing as a soul, the physical effects of decreased oxygen to the brain, and the visions that the dying sometimes report, from rapturous experiences of eternal peace to diabolical dreams.While not dismissing near death experiences as mere hallucinations, Dr. Woerlee is also careful to point out that even powerful psychological impressions by themselves do not constitute scientific proof of life after death. Taking this balanced, objective stance, he succeeds in conveying a better understanding of the dying process and helping us all to realize the nature of these final experiences.G. M. Woerlee (Leiden, The Netherlands) is an anesthesiologist affiliated with the Rijnland Hospital in Leiderdorp, The Netherlands, and the author of two books on anesthesiology.

A Lost Wife A Found Messiah A World on the Brink of Damnation The Devil's minion has offered Crilen a deal: Return to a dead planet's past, save it from self-destruction, and be reunited with the loving wife who died in his arms over a decade ago. Not an impossible task for the fiery cosmic warrior who has built his life around rescuing planets from pagan religions, false gods and atheist monarchs. However, upon his arrival in the past, Crilen finds an incredibly complex world. A world tangled in a web of socio-political strife which threatens to sever the souls of its inhabitants from their faith in God and herd them into the burning pit of eternal suffering. Crilen's affections also become fixated upon Panla Jen, a devoutly religious leader, who seeks to reform her planet's faith by destroying the secular institution which has imprisoned the Word of God with ungodly man-made laws, rituals and ideals. An immoral government which enables the vices of the majority, an amoral news and entertainment media lusting for optimum profits and a violent underground atheist insurrection conspire to shepherd the masses into a spiritual death-spiral fueled by their own lusts for freedom as an end rather than a means. What must Crilen sacrifice to rescue this world and elude the Devil's bidding?

Three decades . . . Five Riftwars . . . One magnificent saga: From New York Times bestselling author Raymond E. Feist comes Magician's End, the final book in the epic Riftwar Cycle. Thirty years ago, Feist's first novel, Magician, introduced us to an orphan boy named Pug, who rises from slavery to become a Master Magician, and to Midkemia and the Riftwar, an epic series of battles between Good and Evil that have scarred Pug's world for generations. After twenty-nine books, Feist delivers the crowning achievement of his renowned bestselling career: Magician's End, the final chapter in The Chaos Wars, the climax of his extraordinary Riftwar Cycle. Pug, now the greatest magician of all time, must risk everything he has fought for and everything he cherishes in the hope of destroying an evil enemy once and for all. But to achieve peace and save untold millions of lives, he will have to pay the ultimate price.